


These things tend to get messy

by WhatIfImaMermaid



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Aliens Made Them Do It, Fuckbuddies, M/M, Nyota Uhura/Leonard "Bones McCoy, Pining Kirk, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-12
Updated: 2017-10-12
Packaged: 2019-01-16 14:51:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12344877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatIfImaMermaid/pseuds/WhatIfImaMermaid
Summary: A lot, Jim tells himself.A lot of heartbreak.Or:It begins because aliens make them do it, and then it becomes one of those things.





	These things tend to get messy

 

It starts because the aliens— _non-terrestrial lifeforms, captain_ —make it a non-negotiable condition for one thing or another— _releasing us alive back to the Enterprise, captain_ —, and in previous away missions Jim’s been asked to marry seven different princesses, eat at least three types of larvae, and surrender several members of his crew to be parboiled and served for a ceremonial banquet, but having sex with his first officer in front of an audience is definitely a first.

 _What the fuck_ , he thinks, and he’s about to say it out loud when Spock asks the Chief, “Does it have to be full intercourse?”

No, it turns out, and that’s how Jim finds himself pressed against some kind of ceremonial obelisk, Spock’s hand hot around his cock and Spock’s breath humid against the shell of his ear.

“I—” Jim manages to push out of his throat, but he’s not quite able to continue, so his fingers move up to curl around Spock’s wrist, and that’s where they stay.

 

~

 

At least Spock and Uhura broke up a couple of years ago, Jim tells himself, still slightly disoriented as armed guards escort them back to the Enterprise. It vastly reduces the risk that she’ll decide to stab the both of them with her nail file.

 

~

 

They don’t put it in the report—at least Jim doesn’t, and he assumes Spock doesn’t either when he doesn’t get a shrieking call from HR (or from Sarek, who for some reason has Jim’s comm number and makes frequent use of it, for random questions that range from “Is my son in good health?” to “Are three cloves of garlic quite enough?”).

They don’t tell anyone—at least Jim doesn’t, and he assumes Spock doesn’t either because on starships gossip goes viral faster than the Danubian flu and Sulu has yet to make a single handjob joke to Jim’s face.

They don’t really think about it—well, Jim does, mainly late at night, under the sonics, and early in the morning whenever he manages not hit the snooze button four times, but he assumes Spock doesn’t, because Jim’s dick can’t possibly compare with supernova decay kinetics, or non-carbon based lifeforms, or pi. 

It’s barely fascinating, really.

 

~

 

They are friends, of course. They have been for a long time, the type of friends who shove each other out of disruptor fire, who can stay silent for forty minutes without needing to come up with useless remarks about the environmental controls, who engage in unspoken and yet merciless wars for dominance over the temperature of their shared bathroom.

So they continue as friends, and Spock is Spock, as always, getting low-key excited about all those space anomalies, turning up the logical act whenever Bones is around and dialing it down as soon as he’s out of earshot, coming over for chess a couple of times a week.

Jim is Jim, too, except that he now has this thing where he thinks about how ridiculously good looking Spock is at least ten times a day, and yeah, it’s not that he hadn’t notice before, but now it’s blatant and insistent and distracting _and_ so what if he smells even better than he looks (for the longest time Jim was convinced that he was borrowing Uhura’s shampoo; now he’s thinking maybe it was vice versa). 

“Captain?” Spock asks, head tilted, and Jim shakes himself out of his reverie and moves his bishop to B7.

 

~

 

The second time, the aliens— _non-terrestrial beings. Captain._ — have been exceedingly welcoming, and Jim is handing Spock his tricorder while Spock is… Jim doesn’t even know, probably examining ficus foliage or something equally edifying, and their hands accidentally brush. The Alinthian President simply assumes whatever she wants to assume about them.

Jim laughs. “Oh, no. There has been a misunderstanding—“

“You mean, you are not coupled together? You will both marry my daughters?”

“Oh, well, actually then, we _are,_ um, coupled,” Jim starts, and then he continues with something that is very convincing inside his head but not outside of it, apparently, since the President’s eyes are narrowing to two slits and next to him Spock’s doing that almost eye-roll that always gets him in trouble with Bones.

“I require proof,” the President says.

Jim’s ninety percent sure that the air displacement originated by Spock’s sigh is already an ion storm somewhere in Bumfuck, Beta Quadrant.

This time there’s no ceremonial props, just a shaky-looking hut and a circle of curious dudes, and it only seems fair that Jim would offer to take a turn, but Spock’s hands are already unzipping his fatigues, and either Spock’s a one-time learner, or Jim has been thinking about this a little too much, because he’s pretty sure he leaves finger shaped bruises on Spock’s biceps, and the whole thing is embarrassingly over before it really begins. Quickly enough that the President not only looks convinced, but also relieved that one of her daughters was spared Jim’s lack of prowess.

Then Spock surreptitiously wipes his hand on his black undershirt and there is a banquet, in which they get served something that looks suspiciously like larva with a side of yams.

 

~

 

The third time, the aliens— _captain, please report to Deck 3 for a sensitivity training refresher on Wednesday at eight-thirty AM_ —have this warrior bond worship thing going on, and Jim’s dick is already half hard by the time the word ‘demonstration’ has been thrown out. Spock just nods, dispassionate, and his fingers are already at work when—

“Is that how you perform sex, in your Federation’s culture?” The Prime Minister looks unimpressed. _Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it_ , Jim thinks, eyes sliding appreciatively to Spock’s hands. 

“Often,” Spock replies, just as Jim decides that this is his time to shine and says, “Not always.”

Jim tries to ignore Spock’s ‘what the fuck, a little help here’ look. “Sometimes people use their mouths. Sometimes they have penetrative intercourse. Other times they just rub against each other a lot. I’ve also heard of this dude who has a micro-orgasm every third time or so he yawns. Awesome, uh?"

Which is how Jim ends up on his knees, Spock’s hand in the hair at the back of Jim’s head and his smell delicious inside Jim’s nostril. Halfway through Jim pulls back with a popping sound and asks, “Okay?” and Spock just exhales, tightening his fingers on Jim’s scalp and guiding him back.

“I enjoyed it,” Spock tells Jim conversationally as they dismount the transporter pad, and Jim’s torn between saying _no shit_ and asking him if he wants one or seven more.

Then he remembers that Spock is his friend, and that Jim doesn’t have many of those, and settles for saying, “Yeah. Blowjobs will do that to you.”

From the control console, Scotty looks at them slightly befuddled, and then makes a show of cleaning his ears.

It’s not until later, when he's in his room figuring out a way to take off the dress uniform jacket without dislodging all the stupid medals and merit pins, that he realizes that he has never complimented Spock for his technique. He feels a little like he did about twenty years ago, when something inside him compelled him not to acknowledge that Erin Johnson had given him the cutest Valentine’s card ever, while in truth he had the biggest crush on her.

 

~

 

“You did _what_ with _who_?”

“You know, Bones, I think technically it should be ‘whom’.”

“ _Whom_? What’s whom?”

Jim waves his hand dismissively. 

“Listen, they were all life or death situations. Or, you know, treaty or no-treaty. We did what we had to do.”

“Right.”

“To ensure survival and optimal mission success.”

“Yes, of course.”

“I did what every other Starfleet captain would have done.”

“Banging his first officer.”

“No—I didn’t bang him.”

“Mmm-mmm.”

“We just. You know.”

“I can’t believe Starfleet gave the two of you a spaceship with warp capabilities and little to no supervision.”

“That’s unfair—”

“This thing with Spock is the worst idea you’ve ever had.”

“There is no _thing_ with Spock and it wasn’t my id—” 

“And I’m including the one of beaming up a beehive just ‘cause you don’t like replicated honey.”

“How could I have predicted the bee insurgency—”

“Don’t come crying to me when this ends up biting you in the ass.”

“Why would it—”

“And this means that Nyota is officially fair game and Spock won’t pinch me dead if I ask her out, right?”

Jim snorts.

“Yeah, well. She might pinch you dead herself. _Whom_.”

 

~

 

It sort of might not have been the very best idea Jim has ever had, though he’s not about to admit it to Bones that he has a point.

Jim’s a little out of his depth. What he’s used to is noticing someone he likes in a bar, approaching them in ways that he convinces himself are suave but really knows to be fumbling and a little juvenile, and maybe sixty percent of the times getting a couple of dates and the sex he wants in return. What’s happening here is that he’s thinking about how witty, and insightful, and fuckable Spock is at least three fifths of his awake time—four fifths when they are together on the bridge and the ship’s at warp—and then…Then, nothing. He can’t exactly approach Spock and hope that he won’t freak over the fact that his captain wants to be bent over and done on the science console. It would be a disaster of epic proportions, possibly even worse than that time he asked Carol out and she said no, since he was never that much into Carol to begin with, and this is Spock, which means that the level of awkwardness he’s capable of reaching is _monumental_. Something mere mortals cannot really fathom.

All those intrusive Spock-related thoughts are still there, though, which puts a bit of a strain on their _other_ relationship, the one that involves them being colleagues and friends who sometimes hang out after hours and doesn’t include them fooling around in semi-public venues to appease potential Federation allies.

Spock notices.

“Two days ago I raised the temperature in our restroom,” Spock tells him from the entrance of their shared bathroom.

Jim’s standing in the middle of his cabin, trying not to fidget, not quite sure where to put his hands.

“Yeah. You always do.”

“But you have not lowered it.”

“Oh.” Jim feels himself blush. He scrambles for something to do with his back turned towards Spock, and all he can come up with is re-stacking by color a bunch of coasters he finds on his desk—oh, he has coasters? Neato. “Really?”

“Are you well, Jim?”

He puts the green one on top of the blue.

“Yep. Why would you ask?”

“You seem… distracted.”

“I’m not—I’m just… doing important stuff. Right now.”

Spock tilts his head and looks at Jim with that intense curiosity. “You are currently arranging in chromatic order coasters whose existence you never acknowledged before today.”

“You don’t know that. They’re a present. From my—um—mother.”

“I have replicated them for your cabin twelve days ago, Jim. Furthermore, the chromatic scale is incorrect.”

“It’s totally correct,” Jim says, affronted.

“As the wavelength reflected by orange objects is shorter than—”

“Was there anything you needed right now?”

Spock looks at Jim intensely a little longer, and then he says, “Negative,” and goes back to his cabin through the bathroom.

Jim exhales and silently wishes the Chief, the President, and the Prime Minister a mild but inconveniencing case of diarrhea. 

From that day on he starts using the coasters, though, ‘cause they are pretty handy.

 

~

 

It continues like that for a few weeks, with Jim nursing his first adult crush like it’s a 2199 Chateau Latour, avoiding Bones and Nyota who in the meantime have started dating and embarked in a relationship that appears to be a good sixty percent based on co-bullying Jim (he is secretly delighted), blushing a little under Spock’s inquisitive gaze when they end up alone in the turbolift, staying up too late to read the great classics of Russian literature and sappy romance novels by one Nicholas Sparks.

In a way, it all appeals to his dramatic side, the one he’d never admit to having in anyone’s presence, spending his days ordering Sulu to go maximum warp, and shooting phasers, and brokering lucrative treaties, and then his nights immersed in unrequited pining.

Then something happens and things change.

 

~

 

“You should take the bed,” he tells Spock when they are assigned to the same temporary quarters after half of the left side of the Enterprise is blown up and decompressed. 

“Very well,” Spock answers, his newly replicated uniform shirt stretched a tad too tight on his chest.

“What? No polite attempt to have _me_ take the bed?”

Spock stares at Jim in confusion for a moment, then his eyes widen in recognition. “Ah, yes. No, captain, _you_ should take the bed.” And then, almost as an afterthought, equally monotone. “I insist.”

Jim rolls his eyes. This might be the most exhausted he’s ever felt in his life.

“Listen, can’t we just both take the bed? The bunk’s not that small, and I bet you barely move at night.”

Spock conks out immediately and then squirms and tosses and turns more than anyone Jim has ever shared a bed with—and more Jim could ever have imagined any adult doing—which any other day would be at least entertaining, but tonight Jim’s so tired that he briefly contemplates pushing him down to the floor. In the end he must fall asleep, though, because when he wakes up ship’s lighting is set to early morning, the covers are completely off the bed and eighty percent of his body is sprawled on top of Spock’s, who’s currently blinking awake.

Moving away would be a good idea.

“Hey,” Jim says, staying exactly where he is.

“Jim,” Spock tells him, before leaning into Jim to yawn into his neck.

 _Okay_.

“How did you, um, sleep?” 

“Satisfactorily,” Spock says into the base of Jim’s throat, and this is the point where there should probably be some kind of conversation, or uncoordinated shuffling away from each other, or an awkward laugh or two, but Spock just pulls back from Jim’s neck and looks him in the eyes, and the only thing Jim can think about is that Vulcans apparently don’t have morning breath and it might be a bit of a problem, because Jim’s not quite sure what his own status is. Then Spock’s hand slides down to Jim’s lower back and ass, and apparently _this_ is a thing that they do, now.

Spock either had a plan for this all along (unlikely) or he’s really good at improvising (probable) because he arranges Jim as if he's had in his mind a specific picture of how he should look for the past five years, finds lube in the drawer—this used to be Keenser’s cabin, who’s now staying with Scotty, so Jim’s not sure what he wants to think about how it got there—and then. 

Yeah.

 _It’s just sex_ , Jim tells himself, and he tries to act like he usually does when he has sex, enthusiastic and carefree and a little mouthy, running a commentary with things like _You give it so good_ and _You’re in so deep_ and _Yes, yes, you like fucking my ass, don’t you_. It doesn’t quite work out, because Spock leans forward between two particularly deep thrusts and kisses him softly on the mouth, and Jim loses track of all that he was saying.

 

~

 

“So. That happened,” he tells Spock afterwards, his cheek pressed into the pillow.

“Indeed,” Spock tells him, a sallow blush on his cheekbones, but he’s distracted, playing with the curve of Jim’s ass and the sticky mess he made in between.

“Okay, then.”

“Okay,” Spock says, and Jim would point out that _okay_ is variable, imprecise, and unvulcan, but Spock is bending down and holding Jim’s ass firmly and kissing him there and _Jim is_ —

Jim shuts up.

 

~

 

Spock has to monitor a forty-eight hour long experiment after that, and then Scotty decides to demonstrate once more how tenuous his relationship with common sense is by doing something that involves asbestos and the warp core, and Jim just doesn't feel comfortable leaving him alone when he's in one of those moods—even though yeah, the mod works great and they’re now traveling at warp 13 but that's _never_ the point—so it's four days before they see each other again. Four days in which Jim might have contemplated, once or thrice, the awkwardness of having to share quarters with someone with whom you happen to have just had some pretty excellent recreational sex without any weird civilization forcing you to do it.

But Spock, who—Jim is starting to have this sneaking suspicion—might possibly be more at ease with sex than your average science nerd, just returns from his shift and lets himself in the shower while Jim is still in it.

“Oh, erm, hi Sp—”

His fingers close around Jim’s cock before he can so much as ask “Are the nacelles still attached?” and Jim’s never been the type to say no to anything, least of all a handjob, so he slowly begins rocking into Spock's fist, leaning into the warmth at the crook of his neck, and when he comes it’s so hard that he feels a little dizzy.

“Like the good old times,” Jim says, more breathless than he’d like.

“Not quite,” Spock tells him, and turns Jim around to open him up.

 

~

 

Uhura starts throwing Jim glances that unsettle him a bit, mainly because it’s always kind of there, that fear that she might decided to make a bomb out of her universal translator and put it in Jim’s office, or broadcast over the Fleet’s universal frequency some mean message like _James Kirk thinks moths are spooky_ or _Once he got tricked into doing two shots of vinegar in a row_. 

(Both true facts, ‘cause Uhura probably wouldn’t lie.)

“You’d better not break his heart,” she tells Jim.

“Good morning to you. Is that oatmeal neon-purple?”

“Yeah, Scotty’s been fiddling with the replicator. Anyway, you better not hurt him, or I’ll tell everyone over the inter-ship frequency about that time Leonard managed to convince you that broccoli is meat for three whole days.”

 _Dammit_.

“Nyota, I don’t think you understand what’s going on, here.”

Her eyebrow lifts.

“No, really. It’s not the way you think. We’re just… having fun. It’s not like Spock’s invested in this, or anything. If anything, I’m the one who…”

He trails off, because Uhura is staring at him like she’s about to stab him with her fork. “You done mansplaining my closest friend, not to mention ex-boyfriend to me?”

She takes a bite of her oatmeal, all the while keeping her murderous gaze on him.

Jim hesitates. Uhura’s got it all mixed up, but out of everyone’s, her shit side is the one he wants to be on the very least. “Really, I—”

“Eeew. Tastes like eggplant.”

 

~

 

Sex aside, it’s fun, being Spock’s roommate.

They talk about this and that, at night before going to bed and in the morning during breakfast and while they’re both off duty and puttering around the cabin, and they were always friends, good friends, too, but before it was one of those _I’d give my life for yours, no questions asked_ type of friendship, and now it’s more of a _I’d love to hear your take on the fact that this afternoon Ensign Pavlov accidentally called me mom,_ or _we have inside jokes about the frequency with which you eat soybean sprouts_ , or _I know sometimes you wake up sweaty at two AM and don’t even bother going back to sleep_ kind of relationship. 

It’s good stuff.

 

~

 

Spock likes to cuddle, though he’d probably couch it as maximizing the allocated spatial resources or sharing available heat or something as heartless as that, if Jim asked. Still, there’s a lot of spooning after the sex, and even when there’s no sex, because the bunk is small and sharing quarters is interesting like that, there’s no escaping the other person no matter the mood you’re in.

Jim loves and hates it, but mostly loves it.

Spock also likes sitting next to Jim and shaking his head in disapproval as they watch holovids of overrated action franchises, chatting about parrises squares, and replicating raw pasta for Jim because he found out that it’s what he likes to snack on (he also doesn’t judge Jim too much, which is a breath of fresh air after years of Bones throwing around the words ’gastrointestinal blockage’ whenever he’d see Jim munch on a noodle).

Some nights Spock has his science things going on, which means that Jim needs to entertain himself, like he somehow did for the past twenty-nine years. He usually just stands there, feeling a little lost, considering getting drunk but then deciding that nah, it's the middle of the week, better to just have some tea and read a book, often a paperback with shiny letters and too-bright illustrations on the cover, wondering when exactly he became the responsible person Pike thought he was all long. Jim mostly falls asleep a few pages in, and when he wakes up his book and glasses are on the bedside table next to the lube, and Spock’s cheek is pressed against the back of his neck underneath the covers.

Spock, Jim realizes, doesn’t quite understand what he’s doing. He’s a generous and decent Vulcan being, obviously observant and caring enough to make life better for Jim, and that’s about it. Jim needs to make peace with it and stop reading things into things, like a fourteen year old rushing to buy a tuxedo for prom because the school’s hot dude turned to ask him what day it is at the beginning of calculus.

 

~

 

The number of people who make a pass at Spock on any given day is frankly absurd. Even _more_ astounding is the fact that Spock gives them zero encouragement, and yet they continue throwing themselves at him in a way that would be entertaining if it didn’t hit a little too close to home.

Jim’s home.

Jim knows that one of these days, one of these _people_ is going to get at least some encouragement. It’s probably going to be someone no one expects, someone Jim’s not even looking out for, maybe a leggy girl with red hair and a throaty laugh who has a D-cup and an unparalleled grasp of plate tectonics, who’ll introduce Spock to some weird Japanese kinky bondage art and they’ll spend every single evening discussing paleomagnetism over dinner and then having acrobatic sex, even when they’re beat from fourteen-hour shifts, and all of their chubby, one-quarter Vulcan kids will manage to sleep quietly through the night from the very day they are born. 

Jim tries to act like he doesn’t care. When he invariably fails, he tries to act like he’s actually happy for Spock, which is what he should have been from the very beginning, since they’re friends and everything.

“That guy was totally hitting on you. I’m pretty sure he has, like, nine copies of your official Starfleet pic plastered on his bedroom’s walls.”

“I believe I would have realized it, if he had started hitting me,” Spock says, as if he couldn’t singlehandedly write the new edition of the Oxford-Cambridge Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs.

“Spock.”

Spock just does that non-smile thing and turns to the calibration panel.

“Anyway, if you want to... you can, you know.”

Spock turns back to Jim and tilts his head.

“I mean, it’s not like I think you need my permission or anything, but all I’m saying is, I don’t expect you to be…”

Spock is staring at Jim like he’s a very interesting space fern now.

“I mean, not that I have any…” Jim takes a deep breath. “I guess what I mean is, we can devise some kind of system if you want to bring someone back to our quarters. Like, a sock stuck between the doors, though that would probably get lots of attention and also be kinda hard to place and the person you’re with would notice, which is not exactly smooth.” Jim is babbling. “But what about some kind of computer message…though I’d have to re-program it pretty frequently, so…Hey, how about you just leave me a message and I promise to check my comm before coming back to our quarters every time. Does that sound good?”

Spock’s brow furrows a bit. “Negative.”

Jim deflates a little. “Oh. Well, then maybe we can figure out…”

But Spock is already turning to the control panel, the discussion clearly over.

 

~

 

There is one of those missions they have once every six months or so, in which for a while it seems like everyone and their mother’s going to die a horrible death. It’s just a little while, though, because Chekov out-equations the Romulan weapon specialist, Scotty figures out how to un-cloak the un-cloakable, Uhura trash-talks the enemy comm officer until Jim’s almost positive he’s weeping in a corner, and Sulu makes the Enterprise do a freaking backflip out of an asteroid belt, and in the chaos Jim’s pretty sure he hears him say something that sounds suspiciously like “whooooooosh.”

When everything’s done Jim stands next to Spock in front of the bridge viewscreen and looks at his team while they do more of the stuff that just saved everyone’s ass, and he thinks how lucky he is, that these people chose to give up so much to be by his side, and they barely bitch—at least to his face—, even in the first couple of years when Jim was still trying to get his footing and figure out this captaining thing, and they also look pretty dashing in uniform, and really, your crew could never.

Spock’s shoulder bumps a little into his and Jim turns and it’s there, that almost smile that Jim doesn’t necessarily want to but cannot help but interpret as _Look. This is our ship. We get to take it for a ride wherever we want_ (with the addendum, because this is Spock, _with obvious constraints posed by the parameters of our mission and by the fact that this is, of course, Starfleet property_ ).

Jim tries to smiles back while his stomach does a Sulu-worthy backflip.

 _Whoooosh_ , indeed.

 

~

 

A couple of months into it, Jim starts wondering exactly how much heartbreak this whole thing has in store for him.

Apparently it takes one hundred years to satisfactorily repair the outer shell of a spaceship, which is why the temporary accommodations become pretty much permanent, at least until they can trek back to a slightly-less-deep space and a decently equipped starbase.

Jim’s never done this, sharing space and time with someone he also has sex with, and while he knows that in this case the two things are—of course—completely unrelated, it’s not as unpleasant as he imagined it would be when he observed his mother’s marriage with Frank or the way Sam and Aurelan always seem either exhausted or anxious to be out of each other’s company.

It makes Jim think broad thoughts, about things he’s never cared about before.

“We’re almost out of toothpaste,” he tells Spock one morning right before getting out of the door.

“I will replicate some,” Spock answers from where he’s standing shirtless in front of the computer station, and Jim briefly wonders if before Spock he’s ever had sex with someone who looks so effortlessly handsome (no, he hasn’t). “I will see you later on the bridge, Jim.”

Then Jim passes Nyota and Bones’ quarters, and tries to shut his ears when he overhears her say, “Babe, we’re almost out of milk, can you replicate some?” 

 _A lot_ , Jim tells himself. _A lot of heartbreak._

 

~

 

“We should probably stop,” Jim says, and Spock looks at him for a long time, more curious than taken aback by the fact that Jim is dumping him in the middle of a training session with lirpas.

In hindsight, not his best idea, cause Jim has problems holding the damn thing upright on a good day, while Spock’s way faster and more graceful and could probably use it to cut carrots for a stew—if he ate stew—and—

“Very well.”

Jim pauses and then he nods, and the lirpa slips from his finger and onto the training mat. 

“The decks have been repaired, which means we can go back to our quarters.”

Spock says nothing.

“It’s not that—These workplace things always end poorly.”

Spock continues staring at him, calm, inquisitive.

“Plus, there’s the chain of command to think about. Of course.”

The stare.

“Not to mention that these types of arrangements usually end up in lots of unpleasantness. You know.”

“I know?” Spock skillfully deposits his lirpa perfectly aligned to Jim’s, and damn him, he’s really good at this workout shit.

He would have been the quarterback, in Jim’s stupid high school. Trust Jim to fall for a fucking jock.

“Yeah. The fuckbuddying. It always gets messy.”

The stare. _Again_.

“There’s always the risk of a person getting into the whole thing more than the other. And then there’s this terrible imbalance, where what person A wants is different from what person B is willing to give.”

Spock’s tilting his head, looking at Jim like he’s some kind of fascinating mitotic spindle.

“It can get really bad.”

Spock steps a little closer.

“It can?”

“Yeah. Oh, yeah. Don’t even get me started. Say, for example, I, you know, fell in love with you and you didn’t fall for me. It would be horrible. Can you even imagine? You’d be minding your own business, scanning alie—um, non-terrestrial flowers, teaching tribbles how to press a lever for some stupid reward or whatever, and I…”

 _Oh, no, no, no_. 

No, please. 

Jim, you’re _pathetic._

“And you?”

Jim swallows heavily. “I’d be—I don’t know—sitting in the captain chair, consumed by lust like a lovesick pre-Surakian Vulcan. It would be ridiculous.”

Spock’s eyes are soft and a little amused, the way they only get when he really likes something, like Nyota’s singing, or recombinant DNA molecules, or peer-reviewed manuscripts on the prime directive. 

He takes one more step forward.

Jim’s heart is still stuck in his throat.

“So you see, it’s really for the best if we—”

Jim’s not sure what he was going to say, because Spock is cradling his face with both hands and kissing him, at first small, thorough, leisured pecks, each time letting their lips meet and then pulling away to catch Jim’s eyes with his, dark and earnest and unreserved; and then deeper, larger, with everything he has. 

Taking everything Jim has.

And Jim thinks that maybe his heart is going to be fine.

 

 


End file.
